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Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale mesmerized its readers with
vivid descriptions of what a black woman wants in her man, and how hard it is
to find it. Women loved it; men were not so thrilled. A friend of mine
suggested that the male version of Waiting to Exhale would be much shorter:
"What I'm looking for in a woman is someone who's great in bed, and then
turns into a six-pack and a pizza." That is, of course, exactly the
problem: The women in Waiting to Exhale are tired of being treated as
disposable commodities by men who will tell them anything before sex and have
nothing to say afterward.

As
the movie version opens, broadcast executive Savannah (Whitney Houston) is
driving from Denver, where there are apparently no men worth having, to
Phoenix, where she hopes there are. Soon she's playing hostess in her new home
to a married man who has been saying for years he's about to leave his wife.
Also in Phoenix are her three good girlfriends: Bernadine (Angela Bassett),
whose husband is about to leave her for his white secretary; Gloria (Loretta
Devine), who has centered her life around her son, putting on pounds in the
meantime, and Robin (Lela Rochon), successful in business but not in love.

During
the course of "Waiting to Exhale," all of these women will either
find what they're looking for, or learn to look for something better. And
they'll do it with dialogue, wardrobes and settings that owe a lot to soap
opera: These are not real women so much as fictional creations carefully
designed to embody dreams and desires. Many of the women in the audience would
be happy to be like any of these women, man or no man.

The
cast listing includes a lot of men, who pop up and disappear like ducks in a
shooting gallery. Savannah may always have Kenneth (Dennis Haysbert) in her
life; he flies in several times a year, telling suave lies to his wife on a
cellular phone while promising Savannah that a divorce is imminent.

Bernadine
has worked for years in her husband's business, only to have him leave her for
his secretary, "the only woman I've ever loved." Bernadine goes
ballistic, throwing his clothes into his car and setting it on fire.
("Would it be better if she were black?" her husband asks. "No -
it would be better if you were black!") Later in the film, in a touching
sequence, she finds a soul mate in a man whose wife is dying; the actor, who is
not billed in the credits, will be a pleasant surprise.

Gloria
is still a fine-looking woman, despite her extra pounds, but has centered her
life on her son, Tarik (Donald Adeosun Faison), ever since her divorce. Now
she's in a state of quiet panic as he prepares to leave for a year in Europe.
Then a single man (Gregory Hines) moves in across the street, and likes "a
little meat on a woman," and furthermore is a homebody and handyman.
(Hines is never seen without a screwdriver or a broken chair; why is it that
everything in a handyman's house needs fixing?) Robin is successful in
business, but maybe that intimidates men; the movie has a sad-funny sex scene
in which the chubby Michael (Wendell Pierce) makes love badly ("Say my
name! Say my name!"), but then turns into an expert at pillow talk. Then
there's Troy (Mykelti Williamson), whom the other girlfriends can see through,
although Robin tries to kid herself he's not a cocaine addict with no money and
a habit of stealing anything not nailed down. And there is also Russell (Leon),
the handsome guy she's addicted to even though she knows better.

All
of these women and all of their stories have been assembled into a screenplay
by McMillan and Ron Bass. He also wrote "The Joy Luck Club," another
film that interlocked the stories of four women, but if that one was high
drama, this film is middlebrow, in which the women face not war, famine and
firing squads, but cheaters, liars, dopers and guys who look fine but turn out
to be gay.

This
is a debut directing job by Forest Whitaker, and somehow the tone of the film
resembles his own acting: measured, serene, confident. I am not sure that is
always the right tone, however. There are times when the material needs more
sharpness, harder edges and bitter satire instead of bemused observation.

"Waiting
to Exhale" is not really an assault on black men (and men in general), but
an escapist fantasy that women in the audience can enjoy by musing, "I
wish I had her problems" - and her car, house, wardrobe, figure and men,
even wrong men.

On
that level, of soap opera and sociological melodrama, however, the movie does
work. I was never bored. Occasionally one of the actresses broke out of the
mold, as when Bassett coolly dealt with the firemen after torching her
husband's car, and I got a glimpse of the energies that could be unleashed in
this material. But for the most part, the movie's content to be an
entertainment with a women's magazine angle; its patron saint could be Mae
West, who wanted more men in her life, and more life in her men.

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